Enabled by their lackeys in both parties, although more so Republican, the Banksters, who we bailed out, especially Goldman Sachs, almost destroyed our economy and caused untold suffering and loss in Main Street America that continues to this day. Until now, congressional Republicans and banksters in the Fed and Obama’s Treasury department have blocked all attempts to bring the banksters to justice, until now.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) designed, marketed and sold collateralized debt obligations that misled investors and created conflicts of interest as the company built short positions before the U.S. housing market collapsed, a Senate panel said in its report on the financial crisis.
In the case of one CDO, Hudson Mezzanine Funding 2006-1, Goldman Sachs told investors its interests were aligned with theirs while the firm held 100 percent of the short side, according to the report released today by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who leads the panel, urged regulators to review all of the structured finance transactions described in the report.
At a briefing today, Levin said he believed Goldman Sachs executives weren’t truthful about the company’s transactions in testimony before the subcommittee at an April 2010 hearing. He said he would refer the testimony to the Justice Department for possible perjury charges.
“In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress,” Levin said.
In a statement, Goldman Sachs denied that it had misled anyone about its business… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Bloomberg>
Not only should Blankfein and several of his cohorts spend some time behind bars, but for their collusion in covering it up, Bernanke should be impeached, and Obama should fire Geithner.
11 Responses to “At Last, a Bankster Bust?”
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and Goldman and all of it’s shareholders should be held to the loss they would have taken had they not created that market and then took the short position. all of those profits both institutional and individual should be clawed back and returned to the pension funds and others they sold the long position to with the collusion of the bond rating agencies.
Amen to all, Mark.
Since we can’t dismantle them altogether, as a compromise I’ll go for TVM’s plan. The bastards!
Ditto!
Isn’t it time to prosecute these thieves instead of rewarding them?
Patty, in a word, yes.
The American people won’t stand for another bailout for the banks – we know that now and half of them never made any concession for that money (thank you Henry Paulson) while the auto industry took severe cuts for their money. I’d back the auto industry again but not the banks. You were the one who took no doc loans, turned them into mish mash and sold them back as AAA securities. The risks they took were ridiculous and they will pay for them. Jaime Dimon just got a $19M raise (the man who lied to congress and wouldn’t say when he would issue loans again and said “The Government has our back” – technically his salary is still $1M but he got it in stock and options and other expenses, such as use of the company plane and moving expenses ($500K worth). You tell me whether his company paid for him to move or not; you know he didn’t pay that out of pocket. TARP will get dismantled as soon as we get our money back. And Banks we don’t have your backs anymore – you fail, you fail.
I agree whole heartly with TC’s assessment of Beranke and Geithner. Both of them should serve time for what they did. Paul Krugman for Beranke’s job and Elizabeth Warren, once she sets up the CFPB, for Geithner’s job. Win, win.
Lisa, I hope your first conclusion is correct. I agree wsa betterith your Warren, but Robert Reich might be better choice for the Fed.
Holder has a fairly decent record when it comes to prosecuting financial issues (his DOJ did convict Bernard Madoff and they have done well prosecuting hedge fund insider trading [notably the Galleon case] and money laundering cases) – maybe not as stellar as we’d like, but very solid.
And it’s always possible, given the changes provided by Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, that the SEC may pursue legal action at an Administrative Hearing rather than in a Federal Court. They’re much easier to prosecute and harder to defend because they allow hearsay; depositions are NOT allowed (so defendant gets no advance warning on how to setup their game plan); and the hearing is adjudicated by an administrative law judge who is employed by the SEC (not that, that would bias one in any way).
But given that the 650-page “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse” report from Sen. Levin’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations provides an excellent roadmap that’s chockablock full of facts, I think it’s headed Holder’s way for criminal prosecution.
Two excellent resources, the first is yesterday’s NY Times very readable “Naming Culprits in the Financial Crisis”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/14crisis.html
… And the second is the NOT so readable (but I’m keeping a copy) of the 650-page official report [PDF]:
hxxp://www.ft.com/cms/fc7d55c8-661a-11e0-9d40-00144feab49a.pdf
Nameless, thanks for the great info. I had to disable your second link, because FT allows links to articles only. I understand they sue bloggers for other use of their content.